#233: A Goofy Movie

Release Date: April 7th, 1995

Format: Theater (Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)

Written by: Jymn Magon, Chris Matheson, Brian Pimenthal

Directed by: Kevin Lima

4 Stars

As much as major studios wish it were so, Disney especially, there is no exact way to predict how the culture will respond to a film. Spend all the money you like, hire the savviest producers, funnel millions into a global marketing campaign, it may or may not mean anything.

Then there’s stuff like 1995’s A Goofy Movie. Made for a miniscule (by Disney’s standards) $18 million and cobbled together from outsourced animation teams from all over the world, I’m sure the execs were hoping to get their money back and knock the dust off of the Goofy character for a new generation, and that’s about it. 

And it did just that. It made a tidy $37 million at the box office, got some lukewarm reviews from critics, and then was shoved aside by Disney so they could point their Deathstar at the audience with stuff they deemed bigger and better, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), and Mulan (1998), which carried budgets of $70 million, $85 million, and $90 million, respectively. 

Then as the years passed, a funny thing happened. Despite very little support from Disney’s merchandising and marketing divisions, A Goofy Movie lived on in the public consciousness. It sold well on home media, and it wasn’t uncommon to meet a younger person in the 2000s who might say something like, “You know what Disney movie I really love? A Goofy Movie.” And they usually said it with a degree of pride, like it was their own little personal artifact. 

Sure, you might not see a trace of the film when you visit Disneyland, and it won’t pop up on some big Disney retrospective of their great films, but that doesn’t matter. Through the sheer magic of cinema and its ability to connect with its audience, A Goofy Movie became a movie that really meant something to a lot of fans.

Watching it tonight at The Frida with Dakota (big fan), its specialness is apparent immediately. It’s so much more relaxed and seemingly spontaneous than most Disney films of that era. It’s funny and playful. The animation is not gorgeous, or even really that great in comparison to stuff like Beauty and the Beast, but it suits the film’s warm, modest aspirations.

The story is about a teenager named Max, who’s wrapped up in popular music and skateboarding and who is pitifully in love with a girl at school, Roxanne, whom he wants to take to a high school party. Max’s dad happens to be Goofy, lovable ol’ Goofy, and Goofy shares the same anxiety that I’m sure many parents feel when their child reaches adolescence: They’re not needed anymore. Their child wants to be their own person now.

Goofy’s plan to rekindle his relationship with his son is to take him on a cross-country road trip to Lake Destiny for some fishing. Max hates the idea. He won’t be able to go to the party with Roxanne, and his dad is just a big embarrassment now. Sure, Goofy is a fun dad when you’re a little kid, but what’s more embarrassing than Goofy as your dad when you’re a teenager?

A Goofy Movie’s depiction of this universal theme has been striking a chord with audiences for 30 years now, and many of those kids who watched it in 1995 get to watch it with their kids and see the film through Goofy’s eyes, rather than Max’s. A Goofy Movie’s popularity isn’t going to be waning anytime soon.

It’s a classic, great movie that I don’t really think Disney counted on for much. Boy, ah yhuk, they were wrong.